


"I'm Right Here"

by FBIEpidemic



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Pepper Potts, Protective Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark has a heart attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-26 03:00:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17737712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FBIEpidemic/pseuds/FBIEpidemic





	"I'm Right Here"

His arms are weak, attached to his aching chest, down to his hips. Past the dip of his belly button, the curve of his too skinny hips, he feels nothing. 

The drip of his blood, rather it's pouring from the wound on the back of his head or steadily streaming through the cracks in his armor, makes him nauseous.

His blood is mixing with the snow, melting together to create the same color red as the shield laying by his head.

His armor is irreparable. The reactor is ruined and between waves of nausea and pain, he wonders if Steve was even aware that he got the reactor taken out. That the dead one on his chest isn't attached to him.

The scars friends leave, they're often permanent.

He knows a thing or two about that.

The crack down the middle of his chest, the scar that runs for miles down his body that makes him hesitant to take his shirt off, that was left by a friend, by a man he'd looked to as a pseudo-father.

Now Steve has left his own.

One last mark for the great American Captain.

 

“Mr. Stark!”

The Peter before him is blurry and he squints his eyes in an attempt to force them to concentrate but pain spikes up the back of his head and everyone suddenly is jumping to action.

Happy, he hadn't even noticed his driver turned bodyguard turned Peter babysitter, wraps his arms around Peter dragging him a few steps back. “Come on, kid. He just woke up, easy.”

Peter hardly fights Happy and Tony takes that to mean the two have bonded. It would make sense. 

“What…” Speaking hurts more than he ever thought possible.

But Happy surprises Tony when he steps close and pushes a button. It was sitting inside of Tony's hand, someone had flexed his fingers around it but he hadn't noticed. 

Not warmth but something… blocking swarms his veins and a comfortable numb falls over his body.

“Just relax, boss.” Happy instructs softly, Peter right behind him. “You've got some nerve damage, all of the doc’s test have been inconclusive so far. Colonel Rhodes is talking to them now.”

“Rhodey?” He fell out of the sky. He was dead. Dead. Gone.

“Boss.” 

Tony vision grows worse. Happy somehow less recognizable than before. 

“Rhodey's dead.” His heartbeat is being measured out in annoyingly high tempo. It's aggravatingly quick.

During his freshman year, he'd taken an Anatomy course, in an attempt to dip his hand in all of the career pools. The only thing he can remember is the busty blonde in row three and QRST waves. 

“I most certainly am not.” 

Tony can't see him but he knows the voice well enough to know Rhodey's in the room. He reaches his hand out in the direction of the voice and after a moment a warm, calloused hand takes his.

An affectionate pat to his hand and he can see the blurry outline of Rhodey's face.

“I don't think he can see so well, Colonel.” Happy supplies and Tony can vaguely see Rhodey's blob nod.

“You're lucky, Stark.” Rhodey chaste softly. “Happy and this kid of yours made it to Siberia just in time.”

“It's true, boss.” Happy informs him. “Peter kept texting me, the kid wouldn't leave me alone. Something about you promising to call him after talking to Cap. He saved you, boss.”

Peter moves, Tony, assumes he's bouncing from foot to foot. “It wasn't that clever. Happy would have noticed himself. I was just being annoying and-”

“Kid!” Tony's head is pounding again and he knows that pushing the stupid button isn't going to help this time. “Thanks… For saving me.”

Peter opens his mouth to start rambling but soft, chasting looks from Happy and Rhodey make him nod his head. “Anytime, Mr. Stark.”

Tony sighs, exhaustion making it hard to keep his eyes open.

“Come on, guys.” Rhodey says giving Tony's hand one last pat,” let's get out of here. Let the old man get some rest.”

If he weren't so tired he might have argued age but instead, he let Rhodey hit the button in his hand one more time and let the morphine do its job.

 

“Is that what you want?!” Rhodey's trying to stop himself from shouting but it's becoming progressively harder. “I can't heal, Tony! You still have a chance! Stop being a piece of shit!”

Tony can't yell. Even speaking quickly makes his brain fuzzy and his ears static. Rhodey’s raised voice is making his breath catch in his chest, he can’t say if it’s panic or guilt. “I don’t not want this, Rhodey.” His voice is even and hard,” I can’t do this. It’s just me now. Cap and others are gone! The world can’t wait for me to learn to walk again!”

Rhodey turns away from his friend, allowing Tony the privacy to get himself back under control after his own outburst. Rhodey clears his throat,” you know none of that is true.” Then after a moment, only as Rhodey is pulling the door open to leave,” I suggest you get over yourself now, your kids in the hall. He doesn’t need to see you acting like an asshole.”

Rhodey leaves Tony to an empty room and a full head.

He’s right, Tony knows. He’s giving up because all he needs to do is done. He needed to correct Rhodey as best as he could, building him legs so that he can walk. He did that. So, now he wants to lock himself in his garage and rot into nothing.

“Hey, Mr. Stark!” Peter stumbles into the room, his book bag thrown over one shoulder off balance as he holds one large purple binder in one arm, a stack of papers, and a brown paper bag of what smells like food.

After a moment, only pausing to dump everything but the paper bag on the floor, he holds up the bag for Tony to see. “Look, I brought dinner!”

Since the accident, after he had healed and worked up enough strength and pain tolerance to sit up in the bed, they’d fitted him for a pair of glasses. Turns out, hitting your head can really scramble everything that you have going on upstairs.

“Cool! John Lennon glasses!” Peter hadn’t seen him since the afternoon he woke up. School, patrol, and Tony literally keeping him away had actually been good for Peter. He got an A on his last chemistry test and he’d finally caught back up in his AP history class.

“What did you get?” Peter puts the bag on the bed, hyper-aware of Tony’s sensitivity to being handed things. Tony opens the bag himself, the numbness in the tips of his fingers pushed to the back of his mind. “Hamburgers, nice.”

He tosses Peter one and digs into his own.

He’s not eating as much as he should be. He’d spent a lot of time working on leg braces for Rhodey and that had help, his Physical Therapist had proudly said his cerebellum would thank him for that one. 

His other doctors had all chasted him for it.

“Mr. Rhodey said that you can probably go back the tower this week. Can you? It’s not that I don’t believe him it’s just that it seems to good to be true. Also, if you do, can you fix one of my web shooters? I broke it because I fell. It wasn’t that bad, it hardly even hurt. I just, my hands keep shaking so it-”

“Kid.” He’s getting a headache again and if he can’t stop it now he’s going to have a migraine and end up throwing up what little of his burger that he actually can manage to eat. “I’ll fix it, don’t worry about it.”

Peter falls silent. His burger gently tossed back into the back. He crosses his legs in his chair, pulling his notebook to his lap and clicking his pen open. “I’ve got homework so… May’s on the grave shift tonight so I figured, if you don’t mind, that I’d just hang out here until I get my homework done?”

He stays so much later than that. 

An unidentifiable amount of hours later and he wakes up in his chair. There’s a blanket over his chest, his notebooks packed up, and a pillow that seems to have fallen into his lap. He hadn’t meant to all asleep and he dares to sneak a glance at Mr. Stark. 

He had meet Pepper in the waiting room. She had hugged him really hard and he needed it. She had taken by his hands and led him to the bathroom, she’d washed Mr. Stark’s blood out from under his nails. She’d even gotten him clean clothes and comforted him. 

The almost strawberry blonde hair hiding the face buried in Mr. Stark’s neck must belong to her.

She wakes up when he moves in the chair.

It had hardly made a sound but he needed to see Mr. Stark. The man’s head was blocked by Pepper’s protective arms and the bed rail and he just needed to see that he was still breathing on his own.No tubes. No masks.

“He’s okay,” Pepper assures him softly. Peter nods his head but can’t tear his eyes from Tony’s face. “I know,” she sympathizes, carting her fingers through Tony’s hair. He moves into her hand, not even breaking from his soft snore. 

Pepper reaches out with her other hand, the one that she placed protectively on Tony’s side. “Come here.”

Peter isn’t sure how both of them are fitting on the bed, it’s something to with half of Tony’s body resting on Pepper as she holds him to her chest but the bed seemed so large, so domineering and now it seems impossibly small. 

Pepper pulls Peter to the bed, forcing him closer. She takes the hand she has in her hand, gently turning Peter’s wrist so that his hand is hovering above Tony’s rib cage. “Easy, you don’t want to wake him.” She places Peter’s hand on Tony’s side and relief floods his chest as he feels the steady beat of Tony’s heart under his fingertips.

“Steve-” a soft cry breaks from Tony’s lips but Pepper soothes it away. She slowly runs her hand through his hair, humming a soft tune Peter doesn’t recognize, and Tony sinks back to sleep.

“He’s okay,” Peter says softly to himself and Pepper nods in agreement. “I should…” leave. He just looks at the time on the monitor, sees the time, and throws himself back into his chair. “I should get some sleep.”

Pepper smiles,” goodnight, Peter.”

“G’night, Pepper.”

 

 

 

Peter finds Tony in the garage. It wasn’t hard to find him, it’s just that Tony isn’t supposed to be in the garage. He’s supposed to be on a ‘work leave’ of sorts. 

“Get a chair, Parker.” Peter doesn’t say anything, he didn’t even make any noise coming down to the garage but Tony knows that he’s the one that entered so he does Tony says. “We’re playing chess.”

He’d spent almost a week at the tower with Tony. Pepper had to leave on Monday, a meeting that had to have either her or Tony present and she wasn’t going to let him go if he was healthy so she left the two of them with plenty of food and the threat that May was still around to kick both their ass’ need be.

With May pulling graveyard shifts again, Peter pretty much had to stay at the tower. 

Over the course of the week, lots of things had happened.

Tony… actually asked for his help, once. It was bad, Peter knew it the moment he saw Tony, but the man had Friday call him up to Tony and Pepper’s room. There he found, Tony laying on the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest, and sweat pouring down his face. 

He can’t really remember a lot of the details between him running down the stairs and sitting with Tony until he was able to sit up on his own again. They avoided each other for the rest of that day. 

But the next day they stayed up all night putting together Peter’s Lego Death Star. 

Peter still isn’t ready for anything other than ‘Mr. Stark’ though but he won’t lie by saying that he isn’t referring to Tony as Dad in his head.

The man does ooze paternal figure.

“Check,” Tony warns, using his Bishop to knock Peter’s Rooke over and placing himself in a square which puts Peter in check.

Peter stares at the board, in complete shock. “What the f-” Peter catches himself on the edge and throws a hand in the direction of the board. “You can’t do that!”

Tony hadn’t left the wheelchair much since they got home. The feeling in his legs was returning, the physical therapy was helping the nerves but it was also bringing a whole new problem with it. Tony’s pain had only gotten worse as the week went on and the PT got more strenuous. 

“I may have hit my head pretty hard, Kid, but I still know how to play chess. And pretty damn well too!” Tony pushes himself back from the chess board, taking a better look at his work.

“Damn,” Peter mumbles, scowling as he’s forced to move his King into a position where he knows it’s going to be easily compromised.

Tony clicks his tongue and moves his Queen,” check, again, Pete.”

It’s not that big of a deal, losing to Tony. Except, when it happens over and over and over and all week he hasn’t had enough sleep, and he’s got an AP Chemistry quiz tomorrow and he’s falling behind in his History class... “Dammit Anthony!” He meant it to be under his breath. Something only meant for him to hear like calling Tony ‘Dad’ in his kid but it doesn’t come out as a mumble.

“Woah, Kid.” Tony sits back in the chair, a smile forming on his lips while shock crosses Peter’s before he covers it up with his hand.

“Mr. Stark, I’m so-”

“No! No, no.” Tony snickers,” that was good. I deserved that. That might be enough chess though, huh? Why don’t we do something fun? Hmm, do you wanna watch Beetlejuice?”

Peter keeps his head down, his face beet red. He wants to go watch a movie. “Can we watch Matrix?” He knows that they’ll get on the couch and if Tony isn’t in too much pain he’ll fall asleep. And sometimes when Tony falls asleep he doesn’t even wake up when Peter lays his head on his shoulder. 

And truthfully, he really needs a good night on the couch with Tony. 

“Bring it in, kid.” 

Peter had averted his eyes when Tony got up on the couch. Half out of respect and half because he didn’t want to see Tony weak or in pain. It’s just not how Tony’s supposed to be.

Peter though is more than surprised when Tony settles into the couch and opens his arm, beckoning Peter cuddle into his side. 

Peter doesn’t have to be told twice.

“Easy, kid,” Tony mumbles as he shifts around too comfortable. “I’m old, antique, I break.”

Peter doesn’t glorify him with a comment, instead, he just closes his eyes and lets himself all asleep.

 

Mr. Stark isn’t sleeping. He hasn’t slept, at least. It’s been three days and Peter thinks he might need to call Pepper or May.

“We need to talk about something, Pete.” Tony isn’t looking at him, his eyes are just cast to the side, unfocused.

He’s standing, though. 

Peter wants to ask about his legs, wants to know if he’s in any pain, but he decides against it.

“We’ve got some stuff… I have to tell you some stuff.”

Peter follows Tony to the garage. 

He tries to keep his eyes everted to the stagger in Tony’s gate, the way his legs don’t seem to do exactly what Tony wants them to do and he certainly doesn’t look back up at Tony when he sees a grimace cross the older man’s face.

He feels like shit though when they do make it to the garage and Happy meets them halfway. The other man had seen how hard Tony was struggling and he brought the wheelchair whilst Peter just looked away.

“Here you go, boss.” 

Peter watches in silent horror as Tony stumbles to the chair and hardly makes it in. He can see the sweat pouring down Tony’s face, the tremble in his hands.

“Boss, are you sure-”

Tony looks up, blinking away exhaustion from his eyes,” I’m sure, Hap. Just-Just give me a minute.”

Happy nods and looks at Peter. The look on his face isn’t angered or disappointed. It’s worse because Peter can swear that he sees guilt and Peter can’t think of a single reason why Happy would feel that way.

“Get the X-Rays.”

“Are you-”

“I’m sure, Happy. Get the X-Rays.” Tony bends over himself as he coughs, ignoring Peter who stands still in the doorway of the garage. Unmoving and unwilling to come any closer.

“I got the whole folder, boss.” Happy hands Tony the manilla folder and steps away but not out of the room. 

Tony sighs, shifting in the chair, ending up sticking his right hand under his legs and just moving them to how he wants them to sit in the chair. “Come here, Pete.”

Peter takes three steps in, positioning himself so that he’s in front of Tony.

“Might want to get a seat, kid.”

Tony tells him everything. He can’t look the kid in the eye for some of it. The feeling of hands in his chest come back and for a moment he has to stop to calm himself down because he’s not in Afganistan, even if his brain is convincing him he is.

Peter doesn’t say a word. That scares Tony a little bit but he also knows that what he’s telling Peter is hard. No one wants to hear about how he woke up with Yenson’s hand in his chest, moving his orangs, and at one point pulling a rib out of his chest. 

When he tells Peter about Obediah, he can see the questions, the thoughts bubbling up in Peter’s eyes and his love for Peter only grows. 

Peter wants to rip these men apart. He wants to ask Howard Stark what was so wrong with Tony? He wants to kill Obediah himself and he wants to meet the Ten Rings so that he can torture and rip them apart.

And then Tony hands him the X-Ray. 

Peter has no medical experience. He’s followed May around, seen her patch him up and seen her patch Uncle Ben up. So the X-Ray in his hand means almost nothing but he does know that it isn’t right. 

“I’ve got a bad heart,” Tony says simply and Peter glances to Happy, who seems unsettled by the oversimplification. “It… The reactor, the Palladian poising, and uh, my most recent mission with Cap… They’ve all done a number on this old body.”

Tony tries to fix Peter with a sad smile but Peter doesn’t look up. His hands are shaking and he can’t tear his eyes away from the X-Rays. There are endless pictures. Peter can’t see Tony’s heart, he can see his lung though. The fake sternum holding his diaphragm together, the mishappen lungs that Tony’s supposed to be surviving by using.

“Kid?”

Peter looks up, just realizing that Tony had said something but he has no clue what it was. He just keeps thinking about Ben. Ben who was here, with Peter one day, and gone the next. 

“So, you’re just going to die? You’re just gonna leave me like Ben did? One day you’ll be here, building and joking, and the next day you’ll just be dead. I’m supposed to protect you like everybody else and then I can’t? Just like that? You’re just gonna leave me with a bunch of old t-shirts to shove in my closet and leave?” Peter leaves the tears to falls down his face as he looks up.

Tony just looks at him. 

“Just like Ben,” he looks down at the X-Ray. “Some stupid inheritance and another empty seat at another empty table and some stupid name to carry.”

Tony looks down at the floor,” maybe-probably.” He nods his head, the doctor’s words coming back to him,” probably, Roo.” The nickname makes the situation only hurt more. 

Peter recoils, letting the X-Rays fall to the floor. “D-Don’t call me that. Can I go home? I want to go home.” He doesn't look at Tony, instead of looking over at Happy.

“Take the kid home, Happy.”

Tony turns himself around the in the wheelchair and propels himself towards his workbench, closing himself off from the conversation. 

On the way home, Happy tells him that he’ll never have to worry about all of that stuff Tony said because Happy will be there. Happy will save Tony.

It doesn’t soothe Peter’s feet.

 

“Peter, do you want me to call Tony?” May rubs at his back, unaware that the tears streaming down his face are because of Tony. “Honey, you have to tell me what’s wrong. I can’t help if you don’t tell me.”

Peter shakes his head, burring his face in May’s warm shirt. It’s Ben’s. The faint scent of his slowly fading uncle makes the sobs stick in his throat. 

“Okay. Okay.” May rubs his back and vows to herself that she’s going to call Tony tonight and rip that man a new one for upsetting her boy like this. Who else could it be that would upset Peter this bad? Her kid has a heart of gold.

“Anthony Stark,” May tries to keep her voice down until she can get out of the apartment. There’s no guarantee that Peter won’t be able to hear her from outside but she needs to try. “What did you do to my boy? Have you really been wearing that armor for so long that it’s turned your heart to iron too?”

Tony hasn’t been sleeping. Pepper’s home and she notice but she cuts him a break. She can see the hurt in Tony’s eyes every time he thinks of Peter.

The kid is everywhere.

Tony can’t go upstairs because he has to pass Peter’s room. The covers are thrown back, his shoes and papers are on the floor from where he runs to and fro in a constant state of motion.

Mugs. All of the mugs remind him of Peter.

His Iron Man mug doesn’t make him feel cocky or like a hero. It reminds him of when Peter found it in the cupboard and refused to drink out of any other mug.

Peter in the living room.

Peter in the garage.

No place is safe and it’s breaking him.

And then he got a call from May.

“So what is it Stark?”

Tony takes a deep breath,” I told Peter something, that upset him.”

“Well, I certainly hope you're happy. He’s been crying since he came home. I just got him to bed.”

Tony closes his eyes. “May, I don’t know what he told you-”

“Nothing. He refused to tell me anything. He couldn’t because he didn’t stop crying until five minutes ago when he cried himself to sleep.”

“I’m… It’s my heart, May.” Tony says, so softly he’s not sure the other woman hears but a soft gasp lets him know all he needs. “The Arc Reactor, it really did a number. Peter is upset because today I had to tell him.”

May says nothing.

“It’s also why he came home early and why he’s been crying.”

Tony can hear May sniffle, no doubt hiding her own tears. She’d gotten close to Tony, too. Their relationship is closer than just two people worried about a kid. “He kept mumbling about Ben… I didn’t even… Oh God, Tony.”

Tony’s heart breaks for her. It’s tough for him but he has to rationalize that he can die at any moment. The others? Pepper? Rhodey? It’s so different. 

“He… I know that I brought up some old feelings from Ben for him. I’m sorry.”

Their conversation dies off fairly quickly. Neither able to contribute so May hangs up, promising to force Peter back around to the Tower and Tony telling she didn’t need to do that.

May is on her way back to Peter’s room when she feels a cool breeze sweep through the house.

Peter’s gone.

 

Blood.

It was everywhere.

“Tony?” Pepper sits up in the bed and watches her fiance limp out of their room. She knows better than to follow, she risks freaking him out, and the last thing they need on top of the Peter fiasco is a panic attack.

Downstairs, where he knows Pepper can’t hear or see him, Tony walks out onto the balcony. 

He looks down to his chest, he wishes for the high of the Reactor. Not the cool metal, the pain that it made breathing or even the light. He wants to feel the way it felt to take it out of his chest. To feel his body panic as it slowly began to stop working. To feel his heart slow, his breathing hitch. To die so slowly.

Tonight he misses the reactor.

He needs it.

He’d woken up to Steve’s fingers wrapped around his throat, Peter laying only feet away unresponsive. He was dying when he woke up and then it was dark and his first thought was that the Reactor had stopped working.

Now he wishes he could take it out again and just hold it in his hands.

“Mr. Stark!” 

Peter’s throwing his leg over the balcony railing when Tony sees him and he sees Tony. 

It almost sends Peter over the edge but Tony jumps forward and grabs him at the last second.

“Christ, kid.” He bites back a comment about how Peter throwing his leg over the edge of the balcony damn near gave him a heart attack. 

“I’m sorry!” Peter falls into Tony and Tony staggers in disbelief. He is stronger than he looks even if his legs don’t work half the time or his heart is failing. 

“I-It’s okay.” Tony hugs him close, patting his shoulder. “It’s okay, Pete. It’s okay.”

Peter shakes his head, moving Tony’s shirt up his chest. “It’s not. I ran away and-” Peter doesn’t say it but they both know what he means.

Tony has abandonment issues. People leave him and then Peter did too. 

“No,” Tony soothes, his hand rubbing through Peter’s hair. “No, God. Pete, it’s okay.”

Peter cries into his chest, just sobbing, and Tony holds him because he’s afraid that he’ll just go up in a puff of smoke if he doesn’t. 

“Let’s get you out of the cold.” Peter can’t thermoregulate, something that works as an everyday horror for Tony. A constant reminder that Tony has to figure out how to keep Peter warm while he’s out. 

 

Peter sits at his desk in the garage. He’s doing his best to think about anything other than Tony sitting a couple of feet away. Like, for example, the fact that they both call the workshop the ‘garage’ even though it could, in no way, be a garage. It’s sitting on the third to top floor in the building and it’s really just a huge room. It’s not a garage, maybe he should tell Tony that.

“Sir, you’re experiencing early-”

“Let it go, Fri.”

Peter turns around in his chair, finally having a good reason to be swinging around in his swivel chair that Mr. Stark is always fussing at him for because… well, because he plays around in it. 

Peter finds Tony clutching his left wrist to his chest. Peter knows that when Tony starts to get anxious, or when he’s on the verge a panic attack his hands shake. It happens when he gets called out for meetings with Mr. Ross or when little kids ask him what it’s like being friends with Captain America.

It’s bad, now. The way that his hands shake, Peter would assume it would mean that there’s a panic attack just waiting to happen. 

He knows better than to interject, to make an observation like that. So he turns back around in his chair, hiking one of his legs up to his chest and wrapping an arm around it. It’s comforting and it draws his mind from thoughts of the garage thing and from the Chemistry homework that he still hasn’t finished. 

Until a bunch of tools fall to the floor and something louder than that falls right behind it. 

“Sir!” Friday’s voice breaks through the room.

Peter stands up, sending his chair spinning backward. 

“Mr. Stark!” Peter falls to his knees, his hands touching at Tony’s chest but not doing anything. 

“Peter, you need to perform CPR on, sir. I’ve just alerted a dispatch team. They should be here in approximately four minutes.” 

Peter closes his eyes. He doesn’t look at Tony as he does the CPR. 

He tries to think about something else instead of the ‘Staying Alive’, or the feeling of Tony’s ribs moving as he pushes down, or the fact that he can’t hear Tony’s heart beating. He’s listened to Tony’s heart for so long now, it’s become something he realizes on. 

And now it’s gone.

Four minutes sees to stretch into hours and yet before he knows it there are arms around his chest pulling him back. They stop him from going on, they pull away, and he sees Tony’s tools all over the floor and his smashed mug. 

Peter gave Tony that mug. He saved up his allowance, did a couple little jobs, and he bought Tony that mug for Father’s Day. Now it taunts him on the floor.

_“World’s Okayest Dad”_

 

 

“You were supposed to be there,” Peter smacks his fist against Happy’s chest, tears blurring his eyesight. “You promised that if anything happened you’d be right there.” His fist lands on Happy’s chest and he doesn't have the strength to continue on.

Happy pulls him close, surprising him when he lands against Happy’s chest.

“You promised, Happy.” His legs don’t seem to be able to hold him up anymore but Happy’s arms pin him there, continue to hold him upright anyways.

Happy doesn’t say anything, he just holds Peter. 

It seems like forever that he just stands there safely tucked between Happy’s arms but he knows it’s not that might hurt worse.

“Ease, honey.” Pepper is gentle as she pushes his hair back from his face. It’s like when she scrubbed the blood from under his nails except now she’s combing through his hair and whispering soothing words to calm him. 

She lures him to sleep and that’s as calm as he stays.

“Why the long face, Roo?” 

He wakes up sometime later in one of the hospital chairs and has the vague memory of Happy shaking him awake and practically carrying him down a brightly lit hallway. Something about May being said between Pepper and Happy, the promise of food. 

Peter looks to Tony, tears that he can’t really shake off. “Don’t. That’s not even funny.”

Tony moves in the bed, shifting so that he can reach out for Peter but moves not healed ribs and shifts his legs and sets his body aflame with pains in nerves he wasn’t even aware he had. It’s pain that Tony can’t mask and it freaks Peter out. It freaks him out so bad that Peter fumbles back as far as he can away from Tony.

“Pete.” He closes his eyes against the pain but he doesn’t hear Peter run away. “Pete don’t go. Don’t go. I’m okay, I’m okay. I just-I just need a minute.”

Peter stays and not because he wants to he does because he’s afraid to run. 

“Pete, look at me.” 

Peter keeps his eyes on the ground, afraid to look up. 

“Peter Benjamin,” Tony says and Peter can hear the smile in his voice. “Come on, Roo. You’re killing me.”

Peter looks up at that, Tony’s body blurry past tears. “Would you stop calling me that? My suit doesn’t even look like Underoos anymore. You’re just doing it to be mean.” He lets himself sink over, seating carefully on the edge of the bed and arguing when Tony tugs him closer. 

Tony pulls him as close as he can and just lets Peter’s natural need to cuddle handle the rest. 

“Oh come on, Pete. You know it’s not to be mean. It’s because I-” Tony trails off, looking into the kid's eyes when Peter looks up and tilts his head. “Because I…”

Peter smiles, tears streaming down his face,” I love you, too.” A hiccup catches in the back of his throat and he has to rub his hands across his face to stop from sobbing. “Just-Just don’t ever do that again. Promise you won’t. I don’t want your stupid company or your stupid name.” He doesn’t wait for Tony to answer, instead of burying his head in Tony’s neck.

Tony presses his lips to Peter’s hair. “I know, son.”

Tony thinks about everything he has to offer Peter. He’s a dud. His legs are damaged, the nerves and muscles, they won’t ever be the same. His heart is weak, even worse off than his legs, not to mention his lungs. 

Peter sniffles,” please don’t leave me, dad.” 

Peter stiffens, waiting for Tony to react, but he doesn’t say anything. Tony just pulls his boy closer, putting his hand up to run it through Peter’s curls. 

“You’re the boss, kid. I’m right here.”


End file.
